Defining Roles for Ethics Champions That Work

Insights from the Champions Clubhouse

In our recent Champions Clubhouse session, participants explored one of the most important challenges in designing a successful Ethics Champions program: how to define Champion roles that work. Role design can make or break a program. When expectations are unclear or unrealistic, Champions disengage. When roles are well defined and designed around Champions’ needs, aspirations, and capabilities, Champions can enjoy their role and derive pride from it.

The insights summarized here were generated by session participants. Through impact mapping, breakout discussions, and a structured survey, participants collectively assessed which Champion activities work in practice, based on their hands-on experience managing Ethics Champions programs.

Taken together, the findings point to three key insights:

1. To be engaging, Champion roles must align with Champions’ aspirations, capabilities, and workload.

2. Ethics Champions are most effective when their role is to enable and support, rather than monitor and enforce.

3. Defining out-of-scope roles is as important as defining in-scope roles. Champions should not be tasked with roles requiring technical expertise (e.g. legal) they do not have.

   
   

Three Criteria for Role Design

During the session, participants discussed and evaluated a portfolio of potential Ethics Champion roles using three criteria:

• Impact: the role allows Champions to make a meaningful contribution to strengthening the organization’s ethical culture.

• Meaning: Champions themselves experience the role as worthwhile and desirable.

• Manageability: the role is realistically achievable alongside Champions’ regular workload, given their time and skills.

Roles to Prioritize

A cluster of roles scored high across all three criteria, impact, meaning, and manageability. These roles should form the backbone of Ethics Champions programs. This cluster included, among others, the following roles:

• Policy Guidance: Supporting colleagues with policy-related questions

• Addressing Concerns: Guiding employees on how to safely handle or report ethics issues

• Ethical Voice: Bringing an ethics perspective into team discussions

Roles to Avoid

At the opposite end of the spectrum, several roles scored low across all three criteria and were broadly viewed as unsuitable for Champions. Examples include:

• Providing Legal Advice: Giving formal legal or policy interpretations to colleagues

• Employee Monitoring: Monitoring employees and reporting suspected misconduct to Ethics & Compliance

• Supporting Investigations: Responding to inquiries related to misconduct investigations

Champions Are Not Legal Experts

Some Champion roles fail because they require technical expertise or formal authority that most Champions do not possess. Assigning such responsibilities risks setting Champions up for failure and may expose the organization to legal or operational risk.

Effective role design therefore requires clarity not only about what Champions do, but also about what they are not expected to do. Programs should explicitly define when Champions must defer to specialized functions such as Ethics & Compliance, Legal, Audit, HR, or Data Privacy.

Focus on Enablement, Not Enforcement

A clear leitmotif runs through the roles prioritized by participants: they position Ethics Champions as enablers for their colleagues. In these roles, Champions support ethical reflection, dialogue, and understanding without exercising control or enforcement authority.

Placing Champions in enforcement-oriented roles creates a role conflict. Champions are most effective when colleagues perceive them as approachable and trustworthy partners. Control-oriented responsibilities can undermine this trust. If Champions are seen as extensions of the corporate compliance function, tasked with monitoring or reporting on peers, colleagues may hesitate to engage them informally for guidance.

Involving Champions in Role Design

At EthicsChampion, we emphasize the importance of involving Champions themselves in defining and refining their roles. From a design-thinking perspective, effective role design is user-centered and participatory. Roles are more likely to have impact, feel meaningful, and remain manageable when they are co-designed with the people who perform them.

A key implication of a user-centered approach is that all Champions do not need to play identical roles. Some organizations already apply this principle in practice. For example, Getinge gives Ethics Ambassadors the freedom to shape their role in ways that fit their strengths (read more here).

In practice, involving Champions in role design can take several forms: gathering Champions’ perspectives to develop a portfolio of possible roles, allowing incoming Champions to select roles that fit their strengths and interests, or collecting feedback from outgoing Champions about which roles worked best in practice.

Our Support to Clients

EthicsChampion supports this type of co-design process through purpose-built surveys and facilitated co-design sprints. Contact us to learn more.

What Are Your Thoughts on Champion Roles?

Which roles are prioritized in your program? Which roles do Champions embrace most? How do you determine Champion roles in your organization?

Please share your thoughts. Leave a comment or send an email to info@ethicschampion.com. This article will be updated based on thoughtful feedback from readers.

Next Up: Skills for Success

Our next Champions Clubhouse session builds directly on this work.

Focus: What skills do Champions need most to succeed in their role? What kind of training should organizations provide?

Date: 22 January 2026

RSVP here.